Wayne Grudem. John Piper. CJ Mahany. Three men I richly respect and have learned a lot from. They have a few things in common. They are all Baptistic. They are all Reformed. They are all charismatic to some degree. Their formulation of the charismatic gifts are pretty much the same and are based mostly on Grudem’s work. I’ve heard both Piper and Mahany agree with Grudem.
Grudem’s position is that the prophets and prophecy we see in the Old Testament, the “Thus Sayeth the Lord” sort of thing, was fulfilled in the Apostles’ writing of the New Testament. Prophecy in the New Covenant is different. Now, because the Holy Spirit indwells covenant members, prophecy is more common (cf Acts 2:15-21, Joel 2:28-32) but of a different sort. Now, according to Grudem, prophecy is fallible because it is given to sinful men and women who may misunderstand or distort. It is not the authorative, “thus sayeth the Lord” but “I think the Lord is saying…”
At first, I reacted against it. This didn’t sound like prophecy. What makes us think that prophecy could be fallible? Well, the proof text offered is 1Th 5:20-21 [1]. Paul commands that prophecy be tested and that which is good is to be retained. I remember John Piper saying that this didn’t sound like something that Paul would command of the Old Testament Scriptures. In other words, if NC prophecy was the same as OC prophecy, he reasoned, then Paul wouldn’t have commanded it be tested like this. Well, this got me. I didn’t know how to answer it so I just kind of swallowed the pill without water. That is to say, it kind of stuck in my throat but it was in there.
This morning, I read something that rather undid that argument for me. I opened to Deuteronomy 13 and read, “If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or a wonder…” Here was a command to test prophets in the Old Covenant. Paul was not saying anything new, he was simply repeating the commandment to test prophets.
This seems to take some of the wind out of the Grudem sails on that particular verse. True, Paul wouldn’t command the Old Testament be tested like that, but he would command testing of contemporary (to him) prophecy. Surely Moses wasn’t commanding that the books he’d written up to that point be tested and only the good retained. Neither was Paul.
But it doesn’t necessarily empty the wind from sails entirely. The very fact that the command to test prophecy is retained in the New Testament canon rather than being passed along either verbally, on in a non-inspired letter. The fact that the command is in an inspired letter and is retained for all the church means something for us. The question is what we are supposed to do with it. It doesn’t support Grudem’s concept of New Covenant prophecy like I originally thought it did. That doesn’t establish continuing prophecy, but it doesn’t deny it either.
So the issue remains: how do prophecy and sola scriptura relate? I mean, if “The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience” (1689 LBC 1.1 [2]) then what are we to do with prophecy today? The cessationalist position is that prophecy must have ended at the closing of the Biblical canon. God spoke through his word and when he was done speaking the canon was closed and revelation has ended. While this makes sense, is there any hint in the Bible that such would be so? The prooftexts offered in the past have been pretty weak in my opinion.
On the other hand, how do we as evangelical Protestants hold to the sufficiency of Scripture deal with the concept of ongoing prophecy? Ah, I continue to wrestle with this issue and remain non-normative on the Charismatic gifts. That means that I’m open to the possibility but cautious to the point of suspicion on their appearance. Perhaps in that I am exercising Paul’s admonition as he intended it.